Visiting An Old Friend

I went to the doctor today.  What I thought was the flu was diagnosed as severe bronchitis.  So, I'm upstairs in bed, the tv droning on in the background, waiting for medicine to kick in and begin to ease the coughing and burning in my chest.

School is on hold.

However, in my mid-year evaluations, I got to thinking about next year.  What do I want to do?  Do I like how things are working?

I made the choices I made this year due to the circumstances we were in last year.  Has it changed? 

Well... Sort of.

Last year my husband and I found ourselves overwhelmed with debt.  I knew we needed to pay it down.  So, that's what we did.  I didn't purchase homeschool materials, and I've regretted it ever since.  I knew it would be tough, piecing it together myself.  When the time actually came to put it all together, I froze.  I had to use a "traditional" program with my step-daughter this year because of possible reporting to the court.  I gravitated to a more traditional curriculum for my other two daughters because of burnout and fear.  I chose the one I knew I could buy a little at a time, because that is all I could afford.

Lesson learned.  I will buy curriculum at tax time.  A lot of stress would be reduced if I would have done that earlier.  This year I've dealt with back-orders, wrong shipments, and stress over purchasing the needed items.

That doesn't mean that it has been all bad.  The non-stop grading gets to me sometimes, but I've watched some skills in my daughters soar.  I've realized that balance is not a bad thing.  Some step-by-step,  line-upon-line, precept-upon-precept textual foundations can be great.

On the flip side, I'm missing the wonderful creativity that came with Charlotte Mason studies.  We've gotten to delve into some creative work with the Wisdom and Christmas unit studies we have done, and I watched my daughters comes alive!  Laura has always been creative.   Megan is five.  Everything is a coloring page... Even her math.  The fun has been in watching my 15 year old step-daughter, told for so long that she doesn't learn the right way or good enough, grasp hold of more creative methods enthusiastically.  She loves it! 

I visited the Heart of Dakota website today.  After months of not even looking at Heart of Dakota, something drew me back.  I began reading the site, the message board, and realized that mt older two daughters could share a curriculum.  That, in my estimation, brings the price down substantially. 

I haven't made any definite decisions yet.  I'm going to pray about our choices for next year.  I do know that, flipping through the examples online, I felt like I was visiting an old friend.